Commenting / Corresponding on an issue

The comment dialogue box appears. Here you can either add a comment for internal use or send a comment to the reporter + request participants.

The first tab labeled Respond to customer does just that. A message here will be sent to the customer and any request participants.

The second tab labeled Internal comment will not send a message to the reporter or request participants. Only Service Desk agents will be able to see this comment.

External vs. Internal Comments

If you are commenting on an issue in a project in which you are not a member of the "Team", then you may only add an internal comment. In this instance, you are a Service Desk Collaborator, and can only add internal comments. If you wish to be able to respond to the customer, a member of the Team must add you as a Watcher 1 / 2 / 3.

In our setup, a message that is sent to “All Users” is the same as a message that is sent to “Service Desk Customers.” “All Users” just means everyone who has access to this issue, which, at Brandeis, is only the reporter and your colleagues.

Moving an issue from beginning to end

In RT, you can move a ticket from New -> Open -> other statuses -> Resolved or Closed.

Service Desk has statuses too, and it also has transitions. Statuses are like towns, and transitions are the roads between them; to get from one town (status) to another, you travel on roads (transitions).

In our default workflow, when an issue is created, it starts in the status Waiting for Triage. From there, you can:

Start Progress on it, which moves it to the status In Progress,

In the screenshot at right, you would choose to travel on the Start Progress road (transition), which would move you to In Progress, the next town (status)

Request Information from the customer, which moves the issue to Waiting for Customer,

Pause the issue, or

Close it.

Similarly, from other statuses, you can move around, e.g. from In Progress to Paused.

Logging work

You can keep track of how much time you spent working on an issue by logging work on that issue.

Go to a particular issue.

Click More -> Log Work.

Fill out how much time you spent on the issue, when you did the work, and any description of the work that you want to add.